Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1887-05-06

officials is dazzling pageant.
AS rule, the corpse, even when so
magnificently conducted to its last home,
is unattended by any relatives. Span
iards finish with their dead, as q rule,
when the church ceremony is over. Few
corpses are accompanied to the cemetery
except by the undertaker's men. But in
ordinary cases the coffin is placed in q
yellow, open car, and driven up to the
cemetery by gentleman in short jacket
and peaked cap. The driver smokes his
cigarette and cracks his whip as he huns
his favorite tune. The ridiculous always
lives next door to the sublime. The
grotesque and the horrible are first cous-
ms.
will describe two that l witnessed in
one day at the great cemetery at Seville.
-Four little barefooted boys arrive at the
cemetery gates. Between them they carry
s little blue and white coffin. They Jog
along, chatting and Laughing, up the long
avenue Of trees. Presently they see some
thing which attracts their attention.
bird in tree. Down they drop the coffin
by the roadside, and of they scamper
across the grass to the tree. They pick
up stones and begin to throw at the bird.
In the process they quarrel about some
/ thing, and two of the boys have q
fight. In the meantime the coffin lies in
the roadway. I walk up to it, and
through the glass let into the lid see the
dead child's face. It has been dead per-
haps twelve hours, so the features are
unchanged, and 1t appears to be calmly
sleeping; several people pass me; no one
takes any notice of the coffin in the road.
One old gentleman nearly tumbles over it
4 70. 4
usual.
Presently these ragged boys have ar
ranged their little difference, return and
pick up the coffin. Two of them have
| ligh ed cigarettes. They carry their
burthen right across the cemetery to
little house, where two or three men with
brass numbers on their caps are smoking
cigarettes. Here they show a paper, and
one OF the men picking up a spade tells
the boy to follow him. OFF they go.
jogging the coffin now this way and now
that, and follow them.
| We come to long line of brick vaults.
Some are empty; some are filed up to
the top with what presume to be mould.
The gravedigger turns over the loose
earth with his spade and strikes 8 coffin
| here and there. 1t is too full He moves
on to another bricked square, pushes his
spade in, and says there is just room. He
| digs little hole and lays the coffin flush
with the top of the brickwork. Then he
| throws few spadefuls of earth from
mound close by, and the ceremony is over.
| There are thousands of these bricked
squares in the cemetery, and each con-
talns q score of cofflns. There is no
| stone over the top, only the loose brown
earth. Some of them are so full that the
earth has TO be piled up to cover the coffin,
and thus the coffin is actually above
ground.
The next funeral arrived as l was leev-
ing the cemetery. A car, driven ~ man
smoking cigarette, came up. 1t was
| followed by cab from which alighted an
| old gentleman, also smoking g cigarette.
The car pulled up at the gate of the ode
| pOsitOry," little house in the grounds
arranged for the reception of people who
have died too late to be buried that day.
| The guardian of the house, cigarette in
mouth, iings open the doors, speaks to
the gentleman, and then calls somebody
to come. man with cigarette in his
mouth now approaches. He and the car
driver lift cut the coffin and carry it into
the house and lay it on the trestles.
Then they light q candle at the head and
foot, and come out and shut the door.
Of drives the car, the man lighting
another cigarette, and the gentleman to
whom the corpse belongs strolls across
the cemetery with the gravedigger to
choose "nis place." The gravedigger
turns up little earth in one brick square
aud then in another. "Too full" SAYS
the gentleman, putting his cigarette. he
goes from square to square, and pokes at
the loose earth with his cane. At last he
settles on square which IS only half
full. "That will do" he says, and then
he returns to his cab and drives sway.
l make inquiries of the keeper of the
depository" The body inside the coffin
is the gentlemau's wife. She died last
night. She will be buried tomorrow
morning. "Will the gentleman return to
see her our1ed!" go, no; he has left her
here. The rest concerns us!'
We find it difficult to understand this
leaving the dead to be buried without
ceremony and without a friendly watcher, |
but the Spaniards think nothing of it. !
They bid their dead goodbye with the |
last prayer. The interment is no cere- |!
mony at all to them. The dead are hur- |
ried out OF the house as soon as possible. |
Sometimes they are sent to the under |
S6hCl . N"pOolGOIJ Wltuiu couple OF |
hours OF their decease, and the friends |
see no more of them. This; with the
southern horror of corpse, one can IN
derstand. But the cigarette smoking of |
hearse drivers, cemetery attendants and |
grave diggers while handling the coffin |
strikes the foreign locker on as, to say the |
least OF it, lacking in ordinary respect for
the dead.
Among the poor there is a very free and
easy way of getting their dead buried. |
One daV outside great cemetery 1 came
upon three common collins lying on the I
ground near the gate. Seeing that the
collins were occupied, started back in
horror, and asked what in heavens name
such an exhibition meant. co." said my
Spanish friend, "they are poor people
who can not afford to be buried yet There
is a little fee to be paid. Some one will |
come by presently and pay for the coffin
fO no nf NF